


I Could Make You Want Me

by Dragonslaeyr



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Alex might just be smarter than she's letting on, Dad!Strand, F/M, I just love Richard and Charlie, I want them to be a family, Psychic!Strand, kind of?, soulmate!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 17:19:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19705945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonslaeyr/pseuds/Dragonslaeyr
Summary: Richard thinks that Alex Reagan may have the dubious honour of being the loudest person he's ever met—and that's only when she's not talking.





	I Could Make You Want Me

When Richard Strand turned six years old, he began to hear the voices. They started out quiet, few and far between. A murmur here, a whisper there—the hum of everyday life and the chatter of being in a crowd. 

Except the voices began getting louder. He learned quickly that it was not welcome to converse with the voices, though when he had first started hearing them, they had been nigh indistinguishable from what came out of people's mouths. He had to learn to only respond to what people actually _said_ —even if it was the opposite of what was in their head. 

By the time he was old enough to understand what they were, he was old enough to tune them out until they were little more than white noise at the back of his mind. It was almost pleasant, a gentle hum to fill his mind when he went running without music or lecturing and needed to stay on topic, not be distracted by the undergrad in the back row who was trying to find the best filter for his unsolicited dick pic.

So, all in all, the voices weren't a curse. More of an adaptation he had to account for in life.

That is, until he met Alex Reagan.

* * *

The first thing Alex Reagan thought when she met Richard Strand was, _Wo_ _w, he's definitely hotter than the pictures_.

It only went downhill from there.

Alex's inner voice was... loud. To say the least. It was boistrous and overwhelming and _numerous_. For each question she actually asked out loud, there were at least five that she conjured up and dismissed in record time. And he heard all of them. 

Richard found himself going back and listening to the interviews on the podcast when they were published, if only because he truly was unable to remember what he had said. He noted how tight-lipped he sounded, mildly regretting how he came across, yet reliving the barrage of thoughts that had sent him so off-kilter. 

_Why her?_ He had lain awake wondering, yet surmised nothing. Maybe it was her career of choice or simply the excitable personality. Regardless, he found himself seeking out moments with her, brief snatches of time that enrobed him in the puzzle of her thoughts. And if he got to spend more time around her too, well. That was an inoffensive by-product.

* * *

The first time _It_ really became a problem was when they went over the solved black tapes. 

"But I don't understand how this one is solved! You say the owner of the bar needed to drum up more business, but how can you know for sure? Thousands of small business owners are in the same boat and they never resort to—" Alex waved her hand vaguely, pointedly. "Y'know, faking a ghoul or a banshee, or whatever that thing is."

" _Allegedly_ is," Richard corrected absently. "And it's a fairly direct train of thinking when you take into account the town's stake in upholding their rumours of hauntings. It drives the majority of their tourism efforts which, in turn, is their most profitable industry."

"But correlation doesn't equal causation!" Alex cried, throwing her hands in the air, and if she was thinking some more pointed things about him, well, he wasn't going to say so. 

Richard sighed. His reasoning, admittedly, was somewhat flawed when accounted for outside of what he personally knew, but how he could explain to Alex that he knew the owner's motives because he had _read her mind_ was beyond him. "If you'd like to reopen the case, you're more than welcome to. I'll even give you all the contacts you need for it. But believe me when I say that poking into this case again will only result in further trouble on your part and the part of the bar owner."

Alex gave him a Look, but shook her head. "We have enough on our plate with the black tapes. No need to reopen old ones." But she sounded bitter, resigned. Richard almost apologized, self-aware enough to know that he had been perhaps a bit too brusque without delving into her thoughts—either way, they were loud enough at the edge of his mind to let him know exactly what she thought of him then. 

_—Smug, self-important asshole—_

_—just another journalist to him—_

_—what about us?—_

"I'm sorry if I seem like I don't want to delve back into solved cases. Believe me when I say that it's for the best—all the closed cases had days, if not _weeks_ of research put into them and were thoroughly debunked by me personally. If it's unsatisfying to you, it may simply be because the answer is laid out without the contextual information around its debunking. I'm happy to give you the files, Alex." Richard paused for a beat, noting how her mind had calmed it's torrential furor against him. "I swear to you, I'm not trying to hide anything."

She ducked her head in acknowledgement, chastened by his explanation and it was only then that he felt the guilt seeping in about the one enormous secret that he _was_ keeping.

* * *

His father called it the Gift. In that period of his life, Richard thought of it as the Burden, but only ever to himself. His father hadn't actually known what he was talking about, but there had been moments when Howard was actually around during his childhood and in those brief instances, he had seen enough evidence of what Richard could do. 

He had begun coming home much more often after that.

Richard went through the motions of the tests his father put him through, because they we're harmless and improperly conducted and his father had let him skip school for them. The tests primarily resembled the plots of the ten cent sci-fi comic books that sat, dog-eared outside the friendly local game shop where nobody seemed to care much about whether or not they we're rained on. He was directed to move things with his mind, to guess what card his father was thinking of, to hover. It was almost pathetic, to hear his father's excitement racing through his head.

Of course, Richard could do none of those things, and he felt vindicated when they all failed. Yet, every once and a while, his father struck something true. Once he had sat Richard in a room alone with him, and had thought a single word over and over until Richard had gotten so sick of it that he had blurted it out. The word had been _Tiamat_ , and Richard had almost rolled his eyes at how predictable his father could really be. 

So he allowed the tests and the attention, never reveling in it, but never quite able to push his father away, either. There was something to that, he knew, but digging into it wouldn't do anyone any good, so Richard simply found himself packing up one night and walking out the front door. 

Throughout all of it, Cheryl had said nothing.

* * *

Richard slipped up more than he'd care to admit. At first it was small—getting them both tea when Alex thought about needing to stay awake and handing her a pen when she remembered a note that needed jotting down. Things that she might have noted with curiosity but no true suspicion. It was only when the cases begun turning back towards him, towards his father and his family and Coralee that the line between thought and words blurred.

To his credit, her voice was so much louder than the others. It pierced the white noise, cutting across it like a real voice, and Richard knew that was partly to blame when Alex thought about Keith Dabich.

"Keith will be fine," he reassured absently, and felt Alex freeze from across the desk. He glanced up at her, their eyes meeting right as he realised his error.

"What?" There was an edge to her voice, and Richard tried to figure out how to work his way out of this one.

"You, ah, had the transcript out," lamely, he held up one of the many interview transcripts piled on her desk. 

"I did," Alex replied slowly. 

"I know you haven't been sleeping well," he added, and it felt underhanded to play that card, but it was all he had. "Keith will be okay. So will the rest of them. So will we."

She wasn't convinced. He hadn't expected her to be, but her mind was soothed enough for now, and that was all he could hope for. 

It kept happening, of course. Once, he made her green tea after she had asked for earl grey, because she had wished she could have switched at the last second. Richard had been too busy puzzling over how he could hear her from across the house to realise his error, but he covered his mistake by pointing out that his own was green tea and he had automatically made two. Another time, he had commented on a case she had been mulling over after they had been silent for the past few minutes. Each time he had found his way out, but the blurring of lines felt more embedded, more real than with anyone else, and Richard didn't know what to make of it.

* * *

"Has he told you about the Gift yet?" Cheryl's voice was scratchy over the phone, and Alex juggled it, the recorder, and her much-needed mug of tea as she listened. Even over the phone, the words felt laden with meaning.

"The Gift?"

"Ah, so he hasn't," Cheryl sounded bitter, which wasn't new. "Does he even know you're talking to me?"

"Ah, no. Not yet, at least, I was going to tell him before we aired this interview, but..." Alex trailed off, pained. "No, he doesn't know."

"It's fine." There was a pregnant pause, and Cheryl cleared her throat. "But the Gift. It was our father's pet project, I guess you could say. Except that he was obsessed with it. The only reason it wasn't his career was that he wasn't paid for it."

"Does it have something to do with Stra—Richard?" Alex stuttered over his name, and wondered hysterically if they could edit it out in post. 

"Everything," Cheryl replied evenly. "When we were around six or seven, my father got it in his head that Richard was special. He tested us both of course, but whatever he was looking for he didn't want to find in me anyways. He became convinced that Richard had something he called the Gift."

"What's the Gift?"

"Apparently it differed. I never really got the full story, my dad never wanted to explain it to me, and I..." Cheryl trailed off for a beat. "Well, I'll admit: after our father began spending more time with Richard, I started to ignore him. Or, maybe not ignore him, but I never wanted to talk about our dad and the tests, and that's all he could talk about."

"He was that excited about them?" Alex tried to imagine a Strand who actively wanted to partake in some kind of test for his eccentric father, and found she couldn't.

"The opposite—he _hated_ them. Called it pseudoscience bullshit, but he got to spend time with dad and skip school and, well. We were young, y'know? Too young to really crystallize that hatred of our father yet."

"So the Gift, what was it exactly?"

"Supposedly it manifested differently according to the person," Cheryl's voice was laced with a familiar skepticism. "My dad believed Richard could read minds. Claimed irrefutable proof, but all I ever saw was the two of them locked away in my dad's office for hours on end."

"Telepathy?"

"Apparently." Cheryl sounded weary. "Richard thought it was just as absurd. He told me as much when, ah, when we still talked. Before he ran away."

"Richard ran away from home?"

"Yeah," Cheryl laughed. "I don't know about any superpowers or whatever, but my brother is fucking smart—pardon my language—and we all knew it when he got a full ride to UBC and left us the summer after he finished high school."

"And... you don't talk anymore?"

There was a long pause on the other line, and Alex almost prompted Cheryl before the other woman sighed. "No. Haven't since... well, since Coralee. But if I'm being honest, I don't know if I ever forgave him after he left me in that house alone. I know why he did it, of course, but... well. Just another nail in the coffin or something."

Alex nodded before remembering that Cheryl couldn't see her, and hummed a response, her brain roiling with thoughts of Strand and his childhood. There was a long beat of silence before she heard Cheryl clear her throat on the other end. "Miss Reagan? I know you know my brother quite well."

"I do," Alex replied, and felt something in her stomach jump at the admission.

"Could... I mean, do you think you could tell him something for me? You can tell him that if he wants to, he can call me. He has my number. It... it hasn't changed since... Coralee." Cheryl cleared her throat and Alex knew the sound of trying to hold back tears. "I never wanted to change it."

"I'll tell him," Alex promised softly. Cheryl thanked her roughly, and seemed to remember she was being recorded, regaining her composure and bidding Alex a rushed goodbye before she hung up, leaving Alex to ponder her thoughts until Nic kicked her out of the studio.

* * *

There was another thing that was peculiar about Alex. Richard could feel her emotions. It was like a blurring of her thoughts, their words blending together so fast that all he could glean was tides of affect. It was strange, but not unpleasant, and it was only when he found himself stepping into the PNWS offices after a particularly gruelling commute, his whole body drooping with contentment, that he noticed the difference. 

He was at peace here. 

It wasn't because of the office. God knows how many shared office spaces he'd had in his journey from grad student to associate professor, and none of them had given him pause—or anything that could even remotely be considered comfort. 

It couldn't be the cases. No matter how skeptical he was, the work he did— _they_ did—was irrefutably dark and macabre. There was little to no space for comfort between the video frames of a spectral haunting, but if there was, he would have been the most laid back man alive.

It was a simple process of deduction. Alex was a warm, albeit loud, presence in his life—ergo simply being around her was a comfort unto itself. Simple. 

Except it wasn't like that. He wasn't comforted by her presence—he felt comfort when she did. Like a positive feedback loop gone awry, he was wrapped up in her moods by the mere existence of them.

_Well fuck_ , Richard thought when he came upon the realization, and that summed up his feelings rather simply.

* * *

Richard was loathe to admit that his father was right about anything, so when he had proudly declared to Richard that his children would likely also get whatever gifts he possessed, Richard resolutely determined that that would not be the case.

Of course, controlling the genetic outcome of your child is easier said than done, and when Charlie came into his custody and he had found himself holding her in his arms and staring into her liquid brown eyes, he had whispered a promise to love her more than his father ever could have.

Still, at the end of the day, Richard Strand was a dedicated disciple of the scientific method, and every once and a while, he would crouch down in front of Charlie's high chair or cot and think desperately hard about something or other and pray to a god he didn't believe in that she wouldn't react. She never did, and as she grew older, started speaking, begun kindergarten, Richard let the knot in his stomach loosen as he hoped that maybe, just maybe, they would be okay.

It was a Sunday afternoon in early summer when it happened. Richard was reaching up on his toes to grab at a box of Kraft Dinner that he had stored on the top shelf for emergencies, talking to Charlie all the while. 

"Just because you're done kindergarten doesn't mean you can't keep learning, sweetie. We can go down to the music store after dinner and look at some instruments, if you'd like. Do you want to learn the piano? Maybe the drums?"

"I don't want Kraft Dinner, dad," Charlie replied, solemnly. Richard turned around, dropping back onto the balls of his feet, frowning. 

"You love KD, though."

"But _you_ don't, dad."

A creeping chill had begun to prickle at the base of his spine, and Richard found himself going very still. "No? I don't remember ever saying that, Charlie."

"You said it last time we had it! I remember, because you cut up the little hot dogs."

Richard crouched down in front of Charlie's seat, taking her tiny hand in his and looking her straight in the eyes. He cleared his mind, and with sharp intensity, thought as hard as he could. 

_I hate Kraft Dinner._

"Dad, you don't have to say it again. It's okay, we can have something else." Charlie smiled at him, wrapping her arms around his neck. Slowly, Richard reached down and scooped her up from the seat. 

"What about spaghetti and meatballs, then? I know that's our favourite." And when Charlie beamed at him in response, he set about finding the dried pasta and frozen ground turkey, and even when his arm began to grow sore with her weight, he didn't dare put her down.

* * *

"So I talked to Cheryl." 

They were in a nice restaurant, seated beside an enormous window overlooking the Pike Place Market, and ordinarily Richard disliked the window seat, finding it too cold and the way that people looked in on him eating unsettling, but it was getting late in the evening and there were faint bands of orange light that were casting across their table and it all felt... nice. 

Until Alex brought up his father. Or rather, the moment she mentioned Cheryl, her mind bloomed with secretive phone conversations traded while he was in Chicago, and he traced the ins and outs of the conversation as he carefully cut his ravioli in half. "Oh?"

"She's nice," Alex's voice was dripping with an unspoken turmoil of meaning, and it only took a carefully quirked eyebrow for her to sigh and regale him with the details of their conversation. As she spoke, Richard sat back in his chair, chewing thoughtfully. Admittedly, he wasn't angry. He knew as soon as she had seen the Cheryl tape, maybe even as soon as she had crossed paths with Tannis Braun, that she would eventually learn about.... It. Really, if pressed, he might even admit that he was impressed that she had gotten here so quickly. Still, she was bringing it up here, in a lovely, small Italian restaurant that was run by a lovely, small Italian lady, and he had promised to pay for dinner after she had offered to help him with the house and Richard Strand was not one to go back on a promise, nor pass up the opportunity to eat traditional tiramisu when the opportunity arose. Aside from the obsessive tendencies of his father, he had been raised _right_. 

"...Which is all to say that I won't publish the episode without your go-ahead, and I really don't want to put you or Cheryl in danger, but I really do have to ask, Richard," Alex chewed at her lip in that one way that she had. "Are you...? I mean, do you... Can you read minds?"

It was so absurd that he almost laughed. Instead, he wiped his mouth and gave Alex a withering look. "Don't you think it would have come up sooner if I could?"

"That's not a no."

She was right. "Alex." Richard took another bite of his food, letting it turn to ash in his mouth. 

"Look, I know it's absurd. I know you don't read minds, but I don't know, I also know that demons aren't gonna possess me in the night, but that doesn't stop the dreams." Alex sighed, dropping her chin into her splayed hands. "I guess I'm just trying to be thorough."

"What do you want to know about it?" Richard asked, trying not to dwell too long on the faint wisps of Alex's nightmares that flared in her mind like sparks. 

"I guess... what is it? What did any of it have to do with his work? And the presents he'd bring you?"

Richard pulled a pen from his breast pocket, delicately swiping Alex's paper napkin and pushing his sleeves up, careful to not dip his elbow in his sauce. "My father believed that the world was divided into two kinds of people: those who had the Gift and those who did not." On the page, he drew a single, harsh line down the middle, and dotted either side with small circles to indicate people. There was a rush of fondness from Alex as she watched him doodle, and Richard hid his sudden bashfulness with a cough.

"But what exactly is the Gift?"

"I'm getting there." Richard chided, smiling up at her. "There is no transferal of the Gift, no way to take or give it away. That's why he lost interest in Cheryl once he had decided that she wasn't _special_. There was nothing wrong with my sister, of course, or anything particularly exciting about me. Frankly, my father was a misogynist, and if that's not enough of a reason to discredit him, I'm not sure how much more is needed. Had he truly cared about proving his hypothesis, he would have sought out a larger sample size, but instead he chose to pin his beliefs on me."

"He said that you could read minds."

"Yes," Richard sighed. "He believed that the Gift was like a power. If you were Gifted, you could have any range of talents—I just happened to be supposedly blessed with the power of telepathy."

"And his research?"

"My father believed that the Gift was passed down through families. He touted some bullshit about genes and whatnot, about how he had awoken the gene in me. The presents he'd bring back for me were often artifacts that he wanted me to tell him more about. You know, because of my _powers_." He punctuated the last word with a harsh jab of the pen to the napkin and Alex winced. 

"And these Gifts... they couldn't be transferred?"

"Well," Richard set about illustrating his point further. "He had some ideas about that, but I admit that when he told me about them, I couldn't quite bring myself to believe it. Regardless, he thought that it was possible, since these Gifts were so potent and deeply ingrained within their person, that if a Gifted person were to click with a non-Gifted person in a very specific way, they could share the Gift. I think when he started in on that theory, he tried to bring Cheryl back into the equation, but I wouldn't let him do that to her."

"So if, like, someone could turn invisible, then they could what? Turn their sibling invisible too?"

"You won't hear me defending my father's theories."

Alex laughed. "It does seem a little far-fetched. But why would he spend years trying to prove something that was so patently untrue? He may not have been the world's best scientist, but surely he realised he was beating a dead horse?"

"Who knows," Richard shrugged. "I think he got what he wanted from me, whether that was affirmation for his theory or, I don't know, something else just as ridiculous."

Alex hummed thoughtfully. "It does seem pretty ridiculous."

The rest of the meal passed easily enough, quiet words traded back and forth, and Richard found himself warmed by the familiar ebb and flow of Alex's thoughts. He refused to give his father credit, but as he caught Alex's eye when she laughed, he thought that maybe if it all led to this, it might have been worth it.

* * *

He called Cheryl that night. She didn't pick up.

He left a single voicemail.

* * *

They were arguing. Again. It wasn't deep or cutting in the ways it had been at the start, when Richard had been angry with a thousand of her voices filling his brain, telling him he was wrong. Their arguments tended to follow a similar pattern nowadays, underpinned by the thrum of trust and affection that seemed to splay out beneath all of their conversations. 

"—all i'm really saying that if it actually _was_ a succubus, you couldn't know! You've never seen one, and there isn't exactly a lot of lore on the topic."

"Alex," Richard tried to keep the fondness out of his voice as he pressed the elevator button and adjusted the crumpled jacket in his arms. "It wasn't a succubus. There's a reason it's a white tape."

"You just didn't watch it closely enough!" The doors dinged and opened, and Alex slid into the elevator beside him, her presence a familiar line of warmth at his side, even in the midst of a spring heatwave.

"I think you can't wrap your head around the fact that someone sent us their sex tape." They began their creaky descent towards the parking lot, and Richard thought that if anything was haunted in this wide, wide world, it would absolutely be this tiny box of rusted cables and death.

"Just because it was a sex tape doesn't mean it can't be haunted," Alex returned, primly.

"If you would like to take a closer look at it, you're more than welcome to," Richard replied smoothly as the elevator jerked to a stop, his words losing their effect as he was thrown against Alex. She pushed him lightly out the doors and he reached for the building exit, opening it for her without a second thought.

_I love you._

Alex had said something then, but Richard was frozen in place, staring at the slowly retreating figure of Alex as she continued her pace out the doors and into the dusk air. She stopped after realising that he hadn't followed, and turned to look back at him. "Richard?"

Standing there, backlit by the array of pink and orange hues that made up the Seattle sky, Alex cocked her head and stole his breath away. The words had been smooth, so ordinary—as if she had said them casually in passing instead of silently, a secret intended for nobody, not even him. She stepped forward, her expression shifting into one of concern, and Richard had never felt as vulnerable as he had in that moment. 

The soft touch of her hand against his forehead, brushing his hair aside ever so slightly, was just enough to snap him out of the moment, and he blinked and straightened up. "Sorry, I was... thinking. Lost in thought. Were you saying something?"

She continued to look at him curiously, her hand positioned against his head for a beat longer than necessary, and when she drew it back, pricks of fear sparked through her mind.

"It's fine," he reassured her, adjusting his jacket in his arms, if only to have something to do with his hands that wasn't pulling her close and kissing the thoughts from her mind. He forced his mouth into a wry smile. "I was only thinking of how many new cases of succubi would come up if you took this on as one of your episodes."

Alex grinned at that, stepping back so that Richard could finally _breathe_. "Nobody deserves to watch the extended collection of our listener's sex tapes, not even you."

"Oh, she's a merciful god," he rolled his eyes, making his way to his car, parked neatly beside hers, and Alex's laugh rang in his ears until deep into the night.

* * *

After that one instance, it began happening more. 

He'd grown used to Alex's thoughts—he'd _had_ to—but after her silent admission even the act of being around her became nigh impossible. 

"Richard!" He didn't need to look up from tapping out the hastily typed email to Ruby to know it was her. He hadn't even needed to hear her voice—he'd heard it when he had hit the second floor. She had been two floors up and wondering where he was, and Richard was ashamed when her thoughts had almost made him turn around, returning to his car and the safety of not being caught by her stare and the rush of affection that filled him up so thoroughly that he could choke.

But he hadn't, and sometimes it felt good to celebrate the small victories.

"Alex," he flashed a tired smile as he stepped from the elevator, and for a moment it was only the two of them.

_—looks good in his new suit—_

_—will think about the new evidence?—_

_—_ **I love you** _—_

But then the thoughts began to ebb away and suddenly Richard realised that there was a quiet intern just behind him, clearing their throat in an attempt to get him to move, and the elevator was buzzing to alert him that the doors were about to close, and he shifted in place, the spell broken. He whirled, practically shoving the intern ahead of him and hopping out of the way of an untimely elevator-related death. Likely Alex would never forgive him, and while he didn't believe in ghosts, he would never allow the elevator the dignity of killing him. Emily Dumont would absolutely come by to alert Alex and Nic that it was haunted by his spectral form and make a show about it and well, there goes the neighbourhood.

The intern flashed Richard a quick, grateful smile and hurried on their way, chirping a greeting to Alex, who only looked puzzled, her thoughts ebbing and flowing in a familiar enough pattern that Richard took the chance to step closer, raising his eyebrows in question. Alex was practically bursting at the seam with questions, and he only waited for her to choose one of the many that swirled through her pretty head.

"Did you almost just die?" Fear for his well-being prompted the first question. His ego preened.

"What does it really mean to almost die?" Richard opted for the more philosophical response, beginning to walk towards Alex's office. She turned and followed easily at his side. "In a million different ways we're all almost dying at any given point in time."

There was that rush of fondness again, warm enough to cause him to stumble over his own feet like a tween, and Alex came to a full stop in the hallway, frowning at him thunderously. "Okay, something's up with you."

"I'm having a weird morning," Richard said, and that, at least, was true.

"Right, but you've been acting weirdly since..." Alex trailed off, and she flicked through her memories like a card catalogue. She landed upon that night in the parking lot easily enough, and Richard spared a brief moment of concern for how obvious he was as he felt the glow of that memory from her point of view. For the barest trace of a second he saw himself, lit by the ebbing glow of the sun, his hair a mess—he needed a haircut—tie loosened and askew, eyes wide and unfocused yet still centered on Alex, always centered on Alex. They were a surreal, almost electric blue in the golden light of dusk, and Richard breathed heavy, snapping from the memory and wondering if he really looked like that to Alex.

"You're doing it again!"

"Doing what?" His response was automatic as he tried to calm the heavy thud of his heart. He had never entered someone else's memories before. It was jarring, but... not entirely unpleasant, seeing through Alex's eyes.

"I don't know!" She waved her hand vaguely. "You just zone out when we're in the middle of talking and get this weird look in your eyes like you're concentrating on something. Like it's about to slip out of your grasp."

"Poetic," he replied snappily, and blinked, straightening up. "Maybe sleep? Stress? There's a number of things. Nothing to worry about though, I'm sure of it."

Richard pressed on towards the office, and the whirl of thoughts allowed him to hear rather than sense her falling into step at his side again. The short walk from elevator to the plain wood door—now, after two years, decorated with gaudy Halloween decoration ghosts and sticky note reminders for Alex that had never been removed—felt more akin to a marathon, and Richard was grateful to stop outside as Alex fished out her keys. The jangle of them mixed with the sharp wave of concerned thoughts and the white noise from the rest of the slowly waking office, and suddenly it was all _too much_. "I used to get migraines as a child. I'm afraid they may be returning."

He wasn't sure what prompted him to share that particular thread, but Alex grasped onto it with a thoughtful look as she pushed open the door. He followed her inside, shaking his head as she gestured towards the light switch. They both dropped into their respective chairs on either side of her desk, but Richard could feel her desire to fret about the room, to rub at his temples, to press her hand to his cheek, to kiss his forehead, to—

"Did you say you had new evidence?" 

"No?" Alex frowned, and inwardly Richard cursed. "Or, I mean, I do, but I didn't think I'd told you yet. Richard?"

He couldn't be bothered to deflect, not this time, not when he was being assaulted on all fronts by her everything. He waved his hand vaguely, insistently staying silent, and Alex began to talk, slowly at first, her voice laden with suspicion, but as he hummed and nodded at proper intervals, she only pressed on.

Richard let her voice—her _actual_ voice—wind around him slowly, letting himself get lost in it. He seemed to be getting lost in a lot of Alex lately. For a brief moment, he wondered if he should distance himself from her. If this _thing_ wasn't bringing more danger, more unnecessary questions and threads to their investigation. If his Gift would ruin even more lives than his own.

But those were dark thoughts, meant for those lonely nights when he was trapped in his father's house, sleeplessly shuffling the same papers together over and over again until he lost consciousness. For now, Alex was gesticulating wildly and her door seemed to be keeping out the worst of the office's thoughts, and Richard found himself leaning closer to take in all that she was. 

* * *

Richard had never taught Charlie how to control the Gift. He had spent that first little while in complete denial, only admitting defeat when they had been riding the bus one day and Charlie had begun giggling furiously, whispering to Richard about what the brunette woman with the absurd reading glasses across from them was working up the courage to say to him.

At first it had been hard. He had fought tooth and nail to escape from under his father's thumb, only to turn around and ask Charlie sweetly if she could perform the same tricks. 

_It's for a good cause_ , he had tried to convince himself. _It's all for Charlie_. But he still felt something in his chest cramp whenever she got tired or cranky, yelling at him about not wanting to practice anymore. 

There was one afternoon, when she was in middle school and Coralee was away for business—looking back, he wondered about that, but, well, she was gone and he was still here, and it was hard to remember to be angry—he was on sabbatical, and he was sitting in the living room, absently making marginalia in a dog-eared copy of the King James when the front door slammed and Richard didn't need to hear the wrenching sob to know that Charlie was _wrecked_. She was in his arms before he could even stand, and he pulled her in tightly, suddenly missing the feeling of simply holding his daughter, and feeling wretched about it only being under the worst of circumstances. "What's wrong?"

"It's Amy," Charlie's voice was high and brittle, and Richard didn't have to search through his memory long to remember Charlie's best friend, really her only friend and confidante. "She—she—I told her—" 

Gently, Richard probed at the corner of his daughter's mind, and she let it fall open, the tears overwhelming her again as the memory came back, sharp and unbidden. Amy, smiling on the playground. Amy, leaning in close as Charlie whispered that maybe she kind of, sort of, a little bit _like_ -liked Amy. Amy's vicious thoughts at the words. The way she jerked back, the disgust pouring off of her in waves. Amy getting up and running away. 

"Oh, Charlie..." there weren't enough worthwhile words to say, and Richard could only hold his daughter close and think comforting thoughts as she cried, hoping with all that he had that perhaps he could, for once, use his Gift for something good.

A week later, when Coralee returned from the trip, she kissed the corner of his mouth with a frown. "Charlie was hiding in her room when I came home. Did something happen?"

And he had only shrugged, rambling off an easy lie about young love and rejection, and Coralee had made a sympathetic sound and gone up to comfort her daughter. He didn't tell her the truth, then. 

He never did.

* * *

After that, Charlie mastered her Gift in less than two weeks, and they hardly spoke of it again.

* * *

They were driving up the highway to British Columbia yet again, and something in Richard thrilled at road trips away from Big Sur, even after all these years. Alex was keeping one hand steady on the wheel, her other absently tapping at her thigh along to the scratchy ebb and flow of the radio. It faded out halfway through the chorus, but she kept the rhythm on her thigh until the song would have drawn to an end, and they were left with only silence.

Well, Alex was left with silence. Richard, as always, was suffering.

He adjusted the dial, trying not to seem too frantic as he searched for something new to drown out the growing volume of thoughts. It always seemed quieter when there was music playing, or maybe it was just something else to focus on. The faint crackling strains of a pop song eked out from the fuzz of white noise, but Alex pressed her fingers to his wrist lightly in admonishment. "Just leave it for now. I like the quiet."

_Well, that's all well and good for you_ , Richard thought, and it was almost bitter, but he relented and shifted back in his seat, staring resolutely out the window. 

_—beautiful this time of year—_

_—I love you—_

_—call mom?—_

_—love y—_

_—make it holy, make it—_

_—lov—_

"Do you mind pulling over?"

"What?" Alex looked over at him, her thoughts immediately switching gears into warring amusement and confusion. "We've barely been driving for an hour!"

"Please?" He contorted his expression into one of pitiable pain, and was rewarded with a piercing feeling of pure, unadulterated love so potent that it left him reeling, and he had to spin and look away. For a brief second, he had seen his own expression reflected back at him, only it was amplified by such fondness that he wondered how Alex could even function.

He wondered, hysterically, if he could call _himself_ functioning. 

They pulled over onto a gravel side path, and Richard barely let Alex switch gears into park before whipping open the door and pushing himself out, stumbling onto the path and grasping at a towering aspen tree that marked the edge of the forest. He almost retched, but it wasn't what his body needed. There was a sharp buzz of white noise around him, and he realised that it was all coming from Alex, and it was coming closer. Faintly, he registered a hand like an anchor at his back, and as he straightened, he found himself not feeling sick, but instead almost vibrating with something that left him aimless, yet desperate to move in all directions at once.

"Richard, you're scaring me."

"I know," he responded, too quickly, too evenly, too easily, and he suddenly felt her every move choreographed almost in slow motion, felt her hand leave his back before it did, knew it would come up to instead press at his chin, would pull him up to look at her, and he could only let it happen around him. 

"Hey, look at me." He could have mouthed the words along with her.

"I am."

"No, _look_ at me." He snapped his eyes to hers, and faintly registered that he was leaning back against the tree, its golden leaves swaying lightly in the breeze far, far above them, and suddenly he was so _tired_. He was exhausted at trying to not give in, a bone-deep rattling that had ceased to stop its movement ever since he had stood under an orange-pink sky and wished he could hear out loud those three words that he had heard so many times since. 

Except that hadn't been when it started. Not really. He cast his mind back and remembered dinner above the neon glow of the Pike Place Market sign, smiles traded in the break room of the PNWS office, comforting silence-that-wasn't-really-silence, not for _him_ , into the early hours of the morning in his father's house, and eleven missed calls left on his answering machine with a wry smile from Ruby and a sticky note with her phone number. 

Richard was tired of not giving in, and they were driving down the road to Vancouver and they had stopped on the side of the road, and oh, but things never went well for him on the sides of roads in the Pacific Northwest, did they? But he wasn't thinking about that right now, and he wasn't thinking about it when his hand reached out—tentatively, always, always carefully orchestrated when it was her—and curled around the back of her head and pulled her in.

The kiss was sweet. Shockingly so, and Richard thought, wonderingly, that it was entirely at odds with what he had imagined himself doing before he wasn't thinking of anything at all. Alex made a small sound in the back of her throat and pushed closer, her hands finding his waist and Richard clutched at her face with all the desperation of a drowning man searching for one more breath of oxygen. 

It took him embarrassingly long to realise that something was wrong, and he found himself pulling back a fraction of an inch, searching desperately for what it was, but when his eyes landed back upon hers—close, so very close—he met only the warmth he always saw in them. She leaned in again and he let himself get lost in her lips and the press of her body around him and he wanted to fade into the now comforting embrace of her thoughts except—

Except he couldn't hear them. 

He pulled back again and briefly worried that he was going to give Alex whiplash but the silence was suddenly far more overwhelming than the voices had ever been, and he felt a snap of fear that it was gone, the Gift had faded, he would never hear her again—

_I love you._

"I love you too," he said, and didn't wait to see her confusion, because he was kissing her again and she was kissing him back, and there were words, fuzzy and blurred that sounded like Alex, always Alex, that rang in the back of his head, but they cut off into sharp, sweet silence the moment that his lips met hers, and for fuck's sake, maybe his father had been right about something. 

* * *

_EPILOGUE_

They were in the parking lot again when he admitted the truth. The sky was hooded and grey this time, and they were on either side of his car, her just opening the passenger's side, and him clutching at the keys as he watched the way the wind rushed through her ponytail, sending each strand in a different direction. "I can hear your thoughts."

"I know." She looked up from the door, resting her arms on the roof of the car and dropping her chin onto clasped fingers. 

"You know?!"

"You're not exactly subtle. I tested it once by thinking really loudly when you were tired, and when you replied, I knew it."

"You always think loudly," he replied wonderingly, before snapping back to attention. "And you didn't say anything?"

"I didn't need to." She smiled at him then, a smile more familiar now than her thoughts, and slipped into the passenger seat without another word. He stood, unmoving for what seemed like an eternity, his mind racing with any number of possibilities that scattered and cracked, breaking like thin ice. From inside the car, muffled, he heard her voice call out, bringing his thoughts to a stuttering stop. "Are you coming? The car's not going to drive itself, unless that's something else you can do."

Wordlessly, Richard unlocked his door and slid inside the car, and really, the only thing he could do was pull Alex into a fierce kiss, never failing to bask in that sweet silence that they always descended into. 

**Author's Note:**

> A few things: 1) I crave more fics with Charlie growing up and Richard struggling through parenthood. I always imagine him as a single parent, but obviously that's not the case for all of Charlie's childhood. Regardless, I think they would have been the cutest up until everything with Coralee
> 
> 2) I HC Charlie as mixed (probably Chinese/white). It's not all that important to the story, but if you want to know how I picture her, that's an integral part of who she is to me.
> 
> 3) I was going to write a much longer and extensive scene of Strand telling Alex that he could hear her thoughts, but I think that by the time he does tell her, it would have rubbed off on her just enough for her to realise that he had the Gift. Also, Alex is a smart cookie, she all but pieced it together in-story, so I doubt they'd have need for a dramatic conversation about it.
> 
> 4) UBC actually is notorious for not giving out scholarships lmao. I don't even know if they offer full rides????
> 
> 5) The song this is titled after and the one I imagine they hear on the radio at the end (which Alex is thinking the lyrics to as well) is Make It Holy by The Staves. Give it a listen! Think of Stragan!


End file.
